Exit133 is about Tacoma

A Time for Healing

I first heard about the devastating “Tacoma Method” of expelling the Chinese from Tacoma from my next door neighbor. The details that he seemed to know were pretty horrific. The stories I read on the official website for the Chinese Reconciliation Project and in the News Tribune today seem a bit less dark than what I heard, but it’s still absolutely mind-numbing.

Several hundred men, led by the mayor and other city officials, evicted the Chinese from their homes, corralled them at 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, marched them to the railway station at Lakeview, and forced them aboard the morning train to Portland, Oregon. The next day two Chinese settlements were burned to the ground. Chinese were actively discouraged from settling in Tacoma until the 1920s.

Now, 120 years later, a new park is being created to remember these events. The Chinese Reconciliation Park is breaking ground today down on Ruston Way near Hyde Park. Get involved.

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